Memo to Sean Hannity: Are Liberals Running Your Site?

by Bruce Price12/13/13
The only reason I went to Hannity.com was to send a message to Hannity that he needs to do more on education. Please.

My take is that the real story behind almost every news story is our public schools, which are mediocre because the Education Establishment is warped by ideology. Dumbing-down is the big game in town. It’s a silly mess but reversible if people apply steady pressure. Especially VIP people like Sean Hannity.

It wasn’t clear where to leave a message so I found a forum called Education and left a passionate MEMO TO HANNITY–DO MORE ON EDUCATION.

Fine. Mission accomplished. But guess what? Admin DELETED my post (of which I had no copy) and sent me a snippy note informing me that I shouldn’t use my own name and had broken various rules.

Not a good omen. The tone was bossy and totalitarian. Not what I expect in a conservative site.

I replied, my only wish is that you give the post to Hannity. Please.

I got another snippy note informing me that various technical people would no doubt see the note and if they thought Hannity needed to see it, maybe he would see it. I couldn’t help thinking that Admin is very quick to hinder, very slow to help. Why not be nice? Or maybe have a sense of humor?

I wondered why Hannity had cold bureaucrats running his site. Rightly or wrongly, I tended to associate such people with the Left, what you might call the commissar personality.

Conservatives, I like to think, are the opposite. Not much interested in bureaucracies and their many rules. We’re entrepreneurial. The question is, what can we accomplish today?

A few weeks later, I went back to find out. I left a post, and then another. Somewhere in here I was cited for a violation. Not sure now. Apparently you are supposed to leave comments but you’re not supposed to tell people how to find out more about the comment. This short-circuits the conversation.

Now, we all understand that on a financial site you shouldn’t talk about biology. You shouldn’t try to sell a house or diet pills. But if someone has written an essay saying that teachers are X and wants to tell me where I can find more information, I want to know. What this Admin calls self-promotion, I call saving the public schools. Hannity.com should be my ally, as I am its ally. Or tried to be.

By way of background, I write a lot about education. I have 200 articles on the web. I want to share my research with people. My posts on Hannity.com were smart, original, interesting and (unlike some others there) grammatical. I bet if Hannity knew what I contributed to his site, he would be sorry to lose me. But that’s what happened.

This verdict came a few days ago: “You have been banned for the following reason: Continued promotion of own website and blogging. Date the ban will be lifted: Never.”

Never!! Banned!! It’s all so zero-tolerance, which I again associate with the Left. All I wanted was to send a note to Hannity; so that’s what I’m doing now. This column. If you know him, pass it on!

Another strange thing about the site was a couple of so-called conservatives whose main goal seemed to be trashing anything critical of the Education Establishment. I knew a guy in Norfolk, a huge liberal, who told me that he had joined a Republican site so that he could mess with their heads. I’ve also noticed books on Amazon where there will be 10 pans, all by people who just joined Amazon two weeks earlier and never wrote a review before. In general, I believe Obama’s operatives seek out critical comments on the internet and attack them. So there’s some trickery going on. Knowing all this perhaps skewers my judgment. But it just seems to me that those two alleged conservatives have a private agenda.

If so, I can’t help but think they won this game, they and the bureaucrats in charge. They kept a conservative intellectual off a conservative site.

Wait, here’s an idea. People can register on Hannity.com. Now and then, visit the Education forum, see what you think, maybe leave comments about that education activist doing so much good work.

PS to Sean Hannity. I’m not suggesting anyone be fired. All I’m hoping for is you’ll talk about education more often. If you want ideas, I’ll provide them. That’s the job I’m running for. America’s Education Consultant. John Dewey had this title for a VERY long time. Look at the mess he made. Monkeys on typewriters could do better. In a contest with monkeys, I believe I’m the people’s choice.__________________________________________________Bruce Deitrick Price explains education theories and methods on his site Improve-Education.org • (1187 views)

7 Responses to Memo to Sean Hannity: Are Liberals Running Your Site?

I post this not only because it was a pretty good rant by Bruce but because I had a similar experience at Ann Coulter’s site. I think what happens is you get these power-mad Little Napoleons who love lording their moderator powers over you. And Bruce is right, that kind of behavior you don’t expect from conservative sites.

At Coulter’s forum (and this was probably four or five years ago), I was debating a subject with someone. I forget what it was. And as part of the discussion I cut and paste either someone else’s post or part of my post from another thread. It was in order to make a relevant point. My conduct was beyond reproach. No ad homs (amazing for me). But I had violated some ticky-tack rule and so the post was deleted.

And I say in all humility that what I was writing was some of the best stuff on the thread, if not the whole site (which tends toward inane rants as is typical throughout the web). So here you have a guy actually adding something of substance and it gets deleted on some anal-retentive technicality. And the moderator there was as arrogant as arrogant could be.

I haven’t been back since. Now I have my (our) own site where that kind of stuff is not going to happen. Oh, I will prune out trolls as need be. And even if someone isn’t a troll, the left will not be allowed to use this place for their mindless talking points. But other than that, anything goes.

I’ve never been to Hannity’s site (nor Coulter’s). I have sent e-mails to O’Reilly, but he hasn’t run any yet as far as I know. On Disqus, I contribute most often to NRO and the Daily Caller, and occasionally other sites, usually without problem.

I’d never heard of The Daily Caller. It’s not bad, but what a pain to navigate, both on a mobile device and a regular computer. The mobile device is a nightmare. But on the computer it’s not much better. I was sitting there reading an article and it, all by itself, went to another page. It wasn’t a pop-up ad (I think). It was just somewhere else.

This, more than moderators with a Napoleon complex, I find to be much more intrusive. National Review has recently added yet another layer of this nonsense. Now you will occasionally be dumped out of the thread of posts that lie under an article and onto an ad. And when you click the close box to the ad, you’re not taken back to where you were. Sometimes the comments section can be quite long. So you have to painstakingly scroll your way down again to find where you left off.

You may cover me in maple syrup and bury me in an ant’s mound before that kind of nonsense ever happens here. And if anyone finds any aspect of this site annoying or bothersome, just email me and I’ll fix it if I can.

I’ve seen that sort of pop-up too, but at least it’s usually in the background. Whether it’s a function of the website or Google or Internet Explorer, I don’t know. Generally it isn’t much of a problem, though I agree that it is a nuisance. Incidentally, this problem of not returning to your place is the problem I had on NRO with the links by the infamous troll jukeboxgrad.

It’s good to know that here at ST we’re not going to have to put up with that kind of nonsense. Perhaps moderators are drawn from the ranks of the IT staff, although there’s no reason they should be, and it’s surprising how far Left many IT pros are. (I was an IT professional myself before the Obama Depression, and Conservatives were vastly outnumbered in our shop). I still comment at NRO and FrontPage, but other than those two (and of course here) I’m not going to waste my time.

Good evening, Mr. Hannity. I would just like you to know that I watch your show, my husband n I, every night. Your show is great! You speak your mind n say it like it is! It is a very sad situation that our country is the way it is. The left is such a bunch of visious people, I never thought I would live to see our country in such a Horrible way… The Democrats are all acting like a bunch of children! Get over it already, and were you ever taught Respect? Teach ur children Respect for our President, whether you like him or not! He is now our president! To hell with Hillary, she had her time in the WH. So Mr. Hannity your show is just the Best! Keep up the Great Work. Anna Whiting, Philadelphia, Pa. Thank you for your time.